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Ethnography: a Neglected Method of Inductive Linguistics

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Ethnography: a Neglected Method of Inductive Linguistics Etnolingwistyka 27 Lublin 2015 I. Rozprawy i analizy DOI: 10.17951/et.2015.27.21 Gary B. P a l m e r (Las Vegas) Ethnography: A neglected method of inductive linguistics Finding a productive scientific perspective on the relation between gram- mar and culture can be difficult, as is shown by the decades old debate on the so called “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”. It is proposed that linguistic research should make more systematic use of ethnography as a source of meanings entrenched in grammar. The cases presented illustrate how grammatical constructions are defined by cultural schemas, scenarios, and models; how non-linguistic (co- linguistic) data resolve old problems in grammatical analysis. A potentially controversial claim is put forward that data on an archaic way of life provide clues to the nature of proto grammar. The cases examined include (1) a study of the global relations between language and culture implied by code-switching, (2) a fine-grained analysis of a semantic network that defines a compound af- fix, (3) the use of native language definitions to define a cultural model of sequences of thinking, feeling, and acting, (4) the use of previously published ethnographies to discover correspondences of cultural models to classes in clas- sifier systems, and (5) the culture of a species of archaic human known to us only through archaeology and paleontology and the possible influences of this culture on the structure of proto grammar. Key words: grammar, scenarios, ethnography, cultural linguistics, linguistic frames, Tagalog, ChiShona 1. Cultural linguistics and ethnolinguistics The purpose of this essay is to call the attention of those interested in cognitive and cultural linguistics to the need for ethnographic research in explanations of grammar. But before making an argument for more use of 22 Gary B. Palmer ethnography and more systematic use, it will be necessary to briefly intro- duce the theory of cultural linguistics, the roots of which we trace most dir- ectly to the thinking of Franz Boas and Benjamin Whorf, who both studied native American languages and developed approaches to linguistic relativity in the early to mid 20thcentury (Palmer 1996). There are too many other important influences to discuss here. While similarities and differences with respect to the Lublin school are mentioned, a systematic comparison and critique is not on the agenda. On setting out to write this chapter, we had in mind an introduction that would sort out the subject matter of various linguistic disciplines, specifically linguistic anthropology, anthropological, cognitive, and cultural linguistics, and the two “ethnos” – ethnosemantics and ethnolinguistics. We would have used the notion of profile as it is simi- larly defined in cognitive and ethnolinguistics as that which is foregrounded or selected from a complex image or base concept, but preliminary reading led to the discovery that Jerzy Bartmiński (2009) had already written that essay, or at least one to which we could contribute little additional insight. Regarding “cognitive ethnolinguistics,” he concluded that the term “high- lights above all the connection of language with the community of speakers who use it, and secondarily (by implication) with the culture of that com- munity” (p. 8). Furthermore, he wrote of the enterprise as involving the “‘subjective reconstruction’ of folk understanding.” Further reading around the topic suggested that ethnolinguistics has much in common with cultural linguistics, except that cultural linguis- tics takes research into national value systems and linguistic worldviews to be possibilities afforded by a more general theory of language and cul- ture rather than as central goals. The Lublin school of ethnolinguistics ap- pears to have a humanistic preoccupation with discovering the values and presuppositions implied by usages of value-laden words and phrases in com- mon use by communities of speakers. Cultural linguistics seems from my perspective to take a more scientific and objective interest in discovering how patterns of grammatical constructions are governed by culturally de- fined and value-laden imagery. But the distinction between subjective and objective is not always easy to make in the science of language, and the cultural linguistic emphasis on scenarios as important culturally defined images is much like Anna Wierzbicka’s focus on scripts, except that cul- tural linguistics does not find it essential that scenarios be described by a semantic metalanguage consisting of a small inventory of universal terms. However,Wierzbicka (2014) has put forth cogent reasons for the practice, such as the advantage of making definitions understandable to native speak- ers as well as researchers. Ethnography: A neglected method of inductive linguistics 23 The analytical tool kit of cultural linguistics gives prominence to the scenario, which is a type of linguistic meaning, a kind of concept1, so a definition is in order. The term evokes not only events, but also actors, goals, plots, and settings. Fillmore (1975: 124) wrote of “standard scenar- ios defined by the culture, institutional structures, enactive experiences, body image.” In Fillmore’s theory, scenarios are a kind of scene. Also im- portant in Fillmore’s theory is the frame, whichrefers to a set of words, phrases or other constructions related to one another by virtue of being connected to a particular part or perspective within a scene. Thus, a frame is essentially a symbolic system organized by conceptual metonymy. Con- sider Fillmore’s famous example, “Get right back down from out of up in that tree”2, which combines a discourse scenario of command (here includ- ing a tinge of admonishment) with a movement scenario based on spatial schemas of verticality (down, up), interior-exterior (out of, in) and nearness- remoteness (right back, from). It draws on lexemes and constructions from four frames, if you regard the spatial schemas as independent, or two frames if you regard them as belonging to a single model. Quinn (1985) spoke of the “scenario word” commitment, which is used by Americans in discussions of marriage. Evidently following Fillmore, Quinn regarded commitment as a social schema that serves as the base concept for a (metonymical) frame vocabulary (Palmer 1996: 125-126). 2. Ethnography is the forgotten component When one first encounters cognitive linguistics, one is exposed to the seductive concept of embodiment as the basis for conceptual metaphors of general use in discourse (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Certainly English up and down as descriptions of mental states arise from such physical expe- riences as being sick and down in bed with the flu or healthy and up and about. Being a little slow, it took me some time to realize that not all 1 I regard schemas, scenarios, and models as types of concepts. All of them are more or less schematic, so when speaking generally, scenarios and models may be referred to as schemas, unless they are very concrete and fully specified, but schemas are not neces- sarily scenarios or models. They may be physical schemas, such as land/sea, hot/cold, or tall/short. Scenarios are action schemas, generally involving animate actors. Models are complex categories composed of more basic schemas, scenarios, and lower-level models. The categories themselves may blend into one another leading to usages that may appear to be inconsistent. Fuzzy analytic categories seem inevitable in a connectionist view of language, which itself models a very complex world. 2 From memory of a lecture at the LSA Linguistic Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, summer 1987. 24 Gary B. Palmer schemas and models of possible interest to linguists are based on embod- ied physical experiences, and indeed that all experience is inescapably both (a) embodied and (b) defined and channeled by one’s culture. To give a mundane example, whether your traditional dwelling is constructed of skins stretched over poles, of mud poked onto a stick frame with a roof of straw or corrugated iron, of lumber and plywood with a roof of asphalt and fiber- glass shingles, or dug into the ground will affect your physical experience of heat, wind, rain, and light. Then it occurred to me that perhaps for many purposes, culture defined as shared knowledge and traditions was the more important source of the schemas and cognitive models that we find in language, not forgetting that language itself is a large part of our shared knowledge and traditions. The pervasive influence of both physical experi- ence and culture on grammar has been recognized by Langacker (2014) and other cognitive linguists. Physical sensations on the one hand and culture on the other are mediated by psychology, specifically by the processes of construal that the cognitive linguists have described so effectively. Among dimensions of construal are bounded versus unbounded things and pro- cesses, figure and ground, schematicity versus specificity, profile and base, perspective taking, intersubjectivity, focus chains, discourse grounding, con- ceptual metaphors and metonymies, and blending. To these, Hill (2005: 157) might add, as would I, “universal human narrative competence.” Yet something is missing from the program, and I think it is ethnog- raphy, that is, descriptions of culture obtained by a variety of methods, both linguistic and non-linguistic. Descriptions of rituals, subsistence practices, politics and warfare, child raising, and much more may reveal schemas, sce- narios, and cultural models that surface as important linguistic categories. We are talking about what Bartminski (2009: 35) referred to as ad-linguistic data, which is “the socially entrenched, belief-based knowledge of the world, common to the speaker (sender) and the hearer (receiver).”3 The need to apply ethnography to a theory of language was realized by the famous eth- nologist Bronislaw Malinowski (Łozowski 2013: 363-364), but working in the early 20th century, he lacked the tools of cognitive linguistics that help us to see the intersections of grammar and culture. Since language is a massive part of human culture, we encounter a circu- larity.
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